Shirley Jackson Awards – Nominations

This year’s nominations for the Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced and I’m delighted to see that Margo Lanagan has been included for her excellent novella, “Sea Hearts”. The novella was published in X6, the same collection that harbours the dark, disturbing and utterly brilliant “Wives” by Paul Haines. If you haven’t got a copy yet, what are you waiting for?

I’ll post the full list of nominees below, but I thought I’d take a moment to quote from the beginning of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson herself. It’s a wonderful novel, one of my favourites, and the opening is sublime:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

How can you not want to keep reading after that?

THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD NOMINEES

In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work.

The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Nalo Hopkinson, Readercon Guest of Honor, will act as host.